- Info
Saveria Olga Boulanger
Post-doc researcher and Adjunct Professor in Environmental Design - University of Bologna, Department of Architecture
Saveria Olga Murielle Boulanger, architect, is a Climate KIC and University of Bologna PhD in Technology for Architecture and a post-doc researcher in the Department of Architecture at the University of Bologna with teaching responsibilities. Her main fields of interest are the study of innovative strategies for urban regeneration in the existing built environment, with specific attention to technological implementation, Smart City, climate change, resilience, mitigation and adaptation strategies, urban microclimate, and bioclimatic design. She is a CasaClima Junior expert and Climate KIC Certified Professional in Low Carbon Transition. She is Adjunct Professor of Environmental Design (A.A. 2021-2022; A.A. 2022-2023) at the Department of Architecture of the University of Bologna. She previously taught design of smart city services in the Master Degree of Advanced Design. She published many scientific papers in national and international key journals. She works on high-level European and national funded projects.
Energy communities as a strategy for the contemporary energy crisis in Europe. A utopia for the future or a viable answer? Reflections from the GRETA project.
10.30 - 13.00 | Session 3: CRISES PREPAREDNESS OF CONTEMPORARY CITIES
It is widely accepted that climate change is urgent but also that the current pathways are somehow improving the responses of cities to it. However, as the last IPCC reports show (IPCC 2022b; 2022a; IPCC et al. 2018), there is a need to accelerate the transition. Besides, we are living in a time of great changes and insecurities on the medical, social and political levels. If the COVID pandemic showed the inaccuracy of our social-economic systems, the political instability, and the resurgence of war inside European boundaries are threatening the same foundations of democracy. Both climatic and political crises are putting at the core a discourse around energy and its configuration as a human right. Indeed, far produced and extracted energy resources are becoming unaffordable for climate, equity, democracy and economic reasons. There is an urgent need to put into practice instruments, strategies and tools to completely switch to renewables, locally produced.
As it occurs in times of profound crisis, mankind projects its desires in better representations of the future (Claeys 2020), notably in utopian models. It happened multiple times in history, and this push allowed the birth of key evolutions. The Smart City, the Green City, and the Digital City can be all seen as examples of this quest for a better future: more connected, sustainable, easier, effective, and efficient. In the last years, a new strategy has grown and is now spreading across Europe: the proposition of energy communities, or community energy, as an answer to energy economic and social issues. Starting from some reflections raised within the H2020 project GRETA, this contribution aims to investigate this strategy through a comparison of the Italian and France contexts, deepening the relationship between the different climates, the current national energy systems and the spread of cases across the two territories. It will end with an overview of the current implementation of an energy community in the city of Bologna, in the Pilastro-Roveri district, where the GECO and GRETA projects are ongoing.
